


vindicated

by bonebo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gabriel gets to be a hero again, Time Travel Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 05:33:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8089069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonebo/pseuds/bonebo
Summary: "This is how it should have been."In which 76 goes back in time to fix not one, but many mistakes.__
  commission for bofawatch on tumblr





	1. I am selfish; I am wrong

After almost a decade of working under the radar to put right the world that he screwed over, fix the mistakes he made and clean up the messes that he caused, 76 comes up with a plan to rectify everything.

Initially, it starts out ambitious--go back in time, stop the Omnic Crisis, stop the founding of Overwatch. Use the intel he has now to shut down the Omnica Corporation early, destroy the omnics that fell offline, keep them out of the hands of the God Program. No omnics to start a global war, no global war to start up Overwatch, no Overwatch to fall and ruin everything.

Perfection.

But the longer 76 thinks over the idea, the more he realizes how flawed it is--because at its core, Overwatch wasn’t inherently bad. Before things went downhill, they did a lot of good to help a lot of people. He thinks, one night as he lays in bed, that if Overwatch had just been handled better, led better, then…

He sits up sharply. He can catch his reflection in the mirror, see his own face; made old and ugly by Overwatch’s downfall, by the mistakes of his own hand. The scars carved into his flesh draw tight as his expression turns firm, set and determined in the pale light of the moon as he realizes.

Overwatch hadn’t been the problem. Its _leader_ had.

Jack Morrison, a young man with too little experience for the job thrust onto his shoulders, put into a position he didn’t deserve to please people that didn’t really care about what was best; and he’d taken the job and had run with it, even though some part of him knew it was wrong, knew he couldn’t do his post justice. He’d taken it without a breath of complaint because it meant he got the bigger desk, the shiny badge on his chest, the cameras and the fame; taken it because that meant he got to call his mother back in Indiana and tell her that _he did it_ , he was a hero now, he’d made her proud.

76 sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. His mother had died in Overwatch’s golden days--before the news programs ran, calling her little boy a liar, a corrupt politician. She died before he would’ve had to make the call telling her that he let everything slip through his fingers.

It’s with a resolute sigh that 76 realizes what he must do.

It’s a simple plan--go back in time, before everything went to hell. Find Jack Morrison, no doubt at some press conference or another, getting his pretty face plastered all over the news.

And fucking _knock some home-grown sense into his head_.

Easy, all things considered; acting it out, however, is not.

“Are you sure about this?” Soldier: 76 looks up at Lena dubiously, palming the small triangular device in his hand; it blinks and flashes with soft pulses of pale blue light, and looks deceptively simple to perform a task as complex as time travelling, he thinks. “Just press the button and…?”

“And it’ll pop you back to the year that’s been programmed,” Lena finishes. She gives 76 a curious look, then tilts her head and asks, “What year was that, anyway? Where are you going?”

76’s eyes snap up to hers, gaze even and narrowed. “Don’t worry about it. Just tell me this thing will work.” 

His voice comes out gruff and sharper than he intends, but--it’s for her own good. The less people know about this crazy plan of his, the better chance it has of succeeding.

Lena raises a brow, looking slightly affronted; she crosses her arms over her chest. “Uh….” She trails off as if uncertain, then nods enthusiastically, finishing, “Yeah! It...should.”

“...should.” _Reassuring._

She frowns, putting her hands back on her hips. “Look, just give it a go, then,” she urges. “I’ve used it loads of times, and look at me! I’m still standing. Still here.” She pauses, then lightly raps the chronal accelerator on her chest with her knuckles, grinning sheepishly. “...mostly, anyway.”

76 sighs, shaking his head.

_Damn kids._

\--

In the end, he does just give it a go.

He waits until night has fallen over the new Overwatch headquarters--hoping that no one will notice his absence, hoping he can get back before dawn rises again and step into a new world. He pulls his mask in place and zips up his jacket snugly, and grabs for the device he’d kept hidden in a nightstand drawer, running his fingers over the smooth surface of it.

_Now or never. Fix what you’ve broken._

76 pushes the button.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it’s immediately like nothing he’s ever felt before--feels like he’s being doused in ice-cold water and pulled backward by a hook around his waist, and everything around him is reduced to vivid streaks of color. When it’s over he’s left staggering, and collapses to his hands and knees, his head spinning; he barely has enough time to yank his mask off before he’s throwing up, retching onto the cool spread of asphalt he’s landed in.

It takes him a moment to realize just where he is--but he has too many memories of this place to ever forget it. It’s a grey compound on top of a hill, surrounded by three sides of woodland and one of cliff faces and ocean, trapped within a fence of ten foot tall barbed wire; it’s only one ground floor but two different basements, a shooting range in the back, freestanding garage on the far side. 76 looks around and realizes he must be in the garage--he sits dwarfed in the shadow of an attack SUV, with bulletproof glass and tires--and when he looks out through the hangar door, he can see Blackwatch HQ itself, just a few steps away.

In the dreary light that manages to filter in through the stormclouds, it looks like a prison; and 76 thinks that for some--an unsung hero of the world that got shoved into the shadows, a lost kid without a cause--it probably was.

For him, it’s a chance at salvation--not the Overwatch headquarters that he was hoping for, but close enough to work. Hell, his target--the young Jack Morrison--might even be inside; 76 can remember coming to visit Blackwatch a few times a month, when things began. Before he pissed it all away to keep the executives happy and the money coming in.

But even if Jack’s not here--honestly the more likely of the two scenarios--there’s definitely someone here who knows where Jack would be, who kept tabs on Overwatch’s commander in a way no one else would dare to; and 76 can’t deny that, even now, he’s dreading running into Gabriel Reyes. 

But it’s what he has to do. 76 hauls himself up to his feet and starts out of the garage, knowing he’s probably already been spotted on camera. He has to hurry.

His fingers punch in a security code he didn’t know he remembered--he’s thankful that he appeared inside the fence, where the security is a shade more lax--and as he steals into Blackwatch’s base, he suddenly feels every bit the criminal that the media has labeled him as. It feels wrong, innately, to sneak through these halls--because they’re Gabriel’s, no matter how badly he didn’t want them, how much he fought to get away. 

Blackwatch is still the house that Gabriel built, and 76 knows firsthand what happens to anyone who is stupid enough to invade it.


	2. I am right; I swear I'm right

It takes precious little time for 76’s luck to break.

He turns a corner, heading for the central office; he’s still amazed that he knows these halls fairly well, despite how long it’s been since he’s been in them. He passes the barracks and the shower room, peeks inside and catches a glimpse of agents he hasn’t seen in years--Vakaris and Simmons, both killed in a raid in Ukraine; Traes, marked MIA after a mission in Brazil; Dell, assassinated by an arms dealer in Louisiana. 

Seeing these men again-- _his_ men, because no matter how much Gabriel argued the point 76 always saw _every_ agent as his own, took their lives (and the loss of them) as his own responsibility--is enough to make 76 pause. For the first time, he realizes the gravity of what exactly he’s doing; can feel the pressure of all the lives he needs to save, the problems he needs to fix.

And then he can feel the cold barrel of a shotgun against the base of his skull.

“I don’t think you have clearance to be here.”

Gabriel’s voice is low but cool, collected; the sound of his gun’s hammer cocking echoes in the silent hallway. 76 swallows thickly and feels his gut tighten, his muscles tensing as adrenaline rushes through him, covering him in a cold wave from head to toe.

His body is ready to fight Gabriel. His heart is far from it.

“Who are you?” Gabriel nudges the barrel sharply against 76’s skull, voice more urgent now; a snarl that demands a response. “Answer me, while you’ve still got enough brain in your head to speak.”

76 finds his tongue in a fleeting moment of clarity--the calm before the storm, a moment of pressure before everything snaps.

“I’m a soldier.”

He drops down in a heartbeat, launches himself up off the floor like a coiled snake; one hand goes for the shotgun, grabbing it by the forestock and wrenching it up toward the ceiling, while the other goes for Gabriel’s throat. 76 wrestles Gabriel backward, away from the window of the shower room and toward the seclusion of the end of the hall--Gabriel’s strong but 76 has always been stronger, and he grunts with the effort it takes to keep Gabriel subdued enough to march him backward, ignores the way Gabriel claws at his arm and tries to break his wrist.

_It’s for his own good._

76 yanks the shotgun away and tosses it aside. Gabriel’s newly-freed hand comes up to deck him in the jaw and 76 staggers with the blow, fingers slipping from their grip on Gabriel’s neck; Gabriel lunges forward, and 76 feels his first real rush of panic as he sidesteps the charge, just barely.

It’s terrifying, fighting like this--because while all he wants to do is subdue Gabriel enough to get information, he knows that Gabriel is willing to kill him, to unknowingly put an end to 76’s grand plan. Gabriel swings again at his face, and 76 is made too slow by his age to avoid the blow; his mask rattles and the visor cracks, and 76 realizes very suddenly that he can’t afford to hold back any longer.

Gabriel is too stubborn to go down easy--so to hell with not hurting him. For his own good and the good of millions, 76 will have to put him down hard.

He shakes the broken glass free of his visor, and squares up opposite Gabriel, mind already analyzing his stance. Gabriel is good--always has been good, frequently dropped Jack in hand-to-hand combat--but 76, now, has decades of experience on him. His decades of fighting Reaper mean that 76 knows what Gabriel’s next move will be even before he does, and where Gabriel is used to a Jack that would fight honorably, 76 has grown too old and too jaded to be above dirty moves. 

Gabriel charges his way again and 76 clocks him hard, straight in the nose, half-sickened by the way it wetly snaps under his fist; Gabriel takes a staggering step back, sucking a breath in through his mouth, and it’s all the time 76 needs to drop to a crouch and jam his fist up between those thick thighs with all his strength. The choked noise he earns in return is vile, makes his skin crawl--he throws another blow to Gabriel’s stomach to wind him, then sweeps Gabriel’s feet out from under him with a grunt of effort, and the Blackwatch Commander topples.

76 gets to his feet while Gabriel lays flat on his back, dazed and blinking. 76 grabs him by the throat and hauls him halfway up, ignores the way Gabriel’s fingers weakly claw at his arm as 76 drags him down the hallway. The door to the office yields under 76’s kick to it, and he tosses Gabriel inside without ceremony, following him in and locking them in together.

Alone--just the way it needs to be.

“Stay down, Reyes,” 76 snarls, panting with exertion. He watches as Gabriel groggily sits up; there’s a smear of blood from the back of his head on the dingy cream-colored carpet, but when he turns his gaze on 76 it’s still clear, narrowed and angry.

He’s every bit the fighter--and 76 can see the ire that fuels him, knows it’s rage and indignity that keeps him warm at night in the decrepit bowels of Blackwatch. He sighs.

“Don’t make me hurt you more.” Gabriel blinks at the words, then sneers, showing off canines made red with his own blood; 76 scowls behind his mask, continues flatly, “I just need to ask you some questions. Give me answers, and I’ll be on my way.”

Gabriel laughs at that--a sound bitter and ugly, made wet by the blood leaking across his lips. 

“You’ve got to be the worst interrogator I’ve ever seen.” He spits a thick wad of blood out onto the carpet, staining it further. “This _hardly_ hurts.” 

76 bristles at the statement. Is that really what Gabriel thinks he’s here for? To torture information about covert ops from him?

“It’s not about hurting you,” he says irritably, impatient. How much longer until someone at Overwatch notices he’s gone? “I just need--”

He cuts off with a sharp noise as Gabriel lunges at him--and 76 can feel his age in the way it makes him slow, how his spine throbs with pain when he’s tackled to the ground. Gabriel slides himself over his hips and starts to rain punches down on his face, his throat, the delicate point of his sternum; he’s Blackwatch through and through, fighting 76 like they’re brawling in a bar. 

His fingers catch on the side of 76’s mask, threaten to pull it free--and panic seizes 76 in a grip so tight that it squeezes control away from him. His body moves without his thought, hauling Gabriel off him with a muffled roar and _smashing_ him down against the ground, pinning him there with his greater weight to hold Gabriel still for punishment.

His punches come in a flurry, with a fierceness that surprises him; held on his back the way his is, with 76’s knee digging into his chest and his hands held above his head, all Gabriel can do is take it. 76 keeps punching him until his shoulder aches, and then the lingering panic makes him keep going, just a bit longer. By the time he finally lets his right arm fall, Gabriel’s face is a bleeding mess, bruises already starting to bloom dark under his skin and swell around his eyes.

76 is horrified. He can’t let Gabriel know--because maybe now, it can end. Maybe now, Gabriel will submit. 

76 leans in close, panting softly as he stares at Gabriel’s eyes; notes the way they’re starting to glaze, the blood that beads and streaks along the short curls of his hairline. He thinks Gabriel might be concussed--and he’s sickeningly glad for it, hoping that at least he won’t have to do any worse.

“You’re going to tell me what I want to know,” he says lowly, gripping Gabriel’s chin with his free hand and making their eyes meet. “Start talking.”


	3. Could swear I knew it all along

As it turns out, Gabriel has plenty to talk about. 

“What do you want to know?” he wheezes, blood flecking his lips with every word he speaks; his chest rattles when he breathes, and 76 thinks back to the punches he’d thrown there and inwardly cringes. “About...Mongolia? Uz...Uzbekistan? Brazil?”

76 scowls again, the hair on the back of his neck prickling; he has no idea, actually, what Gabriel is referring to. And that’s scarier than anything he’s had to face so far--that he’d kept himself so removed from Blackwatch, above it, that he didn’t know everything Gabriel and his men had gone through. 

All the secrets they carried, the horrible things they’d done, in the name of Overwatch; and he’d been too busy holding meetings with funders and press conferences to bother himself with keeping up. He shakes his head, weary.

“I need to know where Morrison is,” 76 says; it feels weird to address himself in the third person, but the last thing he needs is for Gabriel to learn what he’s here for--or worse, who he actually is.

“...you’re going to kill Jack?” Gabriel’s tone changes--from something stubbornly aggressive and hostile to suddenly subdued, fearful. He bucks weakly against the carpet. “Why--Jack doesn’t have anything to do with this! He doesn’t know anything!”

“It’s not about--”

“No!” Gabriel struggles again, taking advantage of 76’s oversight to kick him with unrestrained legs, putting as much power as he could muster into the blow. 76 sways sharply, knocked off balance, and it’s all Gabriel needs to surge up, breaking one hand free to hit 76 open-handed across the face and force him down to the ground. 

76’s head smashes into the floor--he can acutely feel the concrete beneath the thin carpet, and has to blink away stars as he feels Gabriel’s solid weight settle over him, pinning him down with muscle and mass alike. 

“You’re not getting to Jack,” Gabriel hisses, voice a ragged thing; 76 would allow himself to feel touched by the loyalty Gabriel has for him, but the other man’s knee digging into his unprotected spine is doing a good job of keeping him from such sentiments. “Tell me why I don’t kill you, right here and now.”

76 hesitates--but in the end, he really doesn’t have much of a choice. It’s either come clean, convince Gabriel to carry on in his mission; or fight stubborn and let himself die, here in Blackwatch headquarters, and help nobody. 

He sighs in defeat, sagging under Gabriel’s body. “...fine.”

“...fine?” It’s fairly obvious that Gabriel is taken aback by the answer; still wary and skeptical, he presses down harder on 76, squeezing the back of his neck tightly. “Fine what, soldier?”

“Just--let me talk to you!” 76 grinds out through his teeth, eyes screwed shut behind his mask, lip bitten. “I’m not here to kill Jack--or you! I want to help!”

“Help,” Gabriel repeats, mockingly. “Before or after you beat my face in?”

“I had to. Had to find out where Jack is, and you won’t tell me--”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Because he’s going to get you killed!” 76 snaps, voice raw; he tastes blood in his mouth and hates it, hates how even when he tries to help he always pushes Gabriel to blows. “He’s going to get you killed, and himself, and he’s going to ruin Overwatch….”

There’s a pause, the room deathly silent--then Gabriel’s weight shifts, and 76 sucks in a breath as it vanishes completely. He rolls onto his front to look up at Gabriel, taking in the crossed arms and scowl, the way his shoulders heave, and ventures, “Are you going to let me explain, now?”

Gabriel glares at him--reaches across his desk and fishes around under it, until he pulls free a small pistol. He leans against his desk and cocks the hammer, then points it straight at 76’s face, eyes narrowed.

“Keep talking.”


	4. I am flawed; but I am cleaning up so well

76 talks.

Gabriel calls Jack--finds him fresh out of a meeting with the global press in Austria, still riding the high, still _clueless_ \--and 76 talks to him too, tamps down his bravado in a way he’s sure is cruel.

Jack means well, honestly. 76 knows that. He just doesn’t care.

By the time he leaves Blackwatch HQ, 76 isn’t even really sure if he made a difference. He steps out onto the dark green grass with Gabriel’s eyes boring into his back--the Commander watches him from the window of his office, still trapped by the castle he never wanted to rule. As he walks out toward the cliff face that overlooks the sea, 76 can hear the waves crashing endlessly onto the shore; he stares down into the choppy water and watches it roll unbidden and unchecked against the jagged rocks of the shoreline, and wonders if he’s done enough.

The mini-accelerator flashes through the loose fist he holds it in; pulsing like a beacon, lights burning warm against his palm.

There’s only one way to find out.

__

 

It takes him days to find his way back home--to even find out where home is. 

The accelerator spits him out onto a flat, grassy stretch of land, and after the customary emptying of his stomach he staggers up, looks around, wonders. He’s surrounded on all sides by tall grass, with a few shrubs and small trees scattered about; he can hear birds singing from their perches, and he’s left utterly confused. He’d thought the thing would put him back in his time, at the place he’d left it--

But then he catches sight of a large, mottled rock jutting out of the ground near his feet, and it makes him pause; it’s familiar, and it takes him only a moment to remember that he watched Genji spear that very same rock with his shuriken a few months after the new Overwatch base had been built.

The blades had cracked the stone, and Genji had laughed, crowed about his strength and prowess. 76 remembers it fondly.

But the stone has no such damage now.

76 stares at it for a moment longer, then fishes his emergency communicator out of one pocket of his jacket. He dials a number he’s had memorized for decades, and brushes his fingers over the coarse, mossy stone as he hears the person on the other end of the line gasp.

_“Jack?”_

__

When the plane touches down outside the Swiss Headquarters, he isn’t sure what to expect.

76 lingers for a moment, just gathering his wits, bracing himself--how much has he changed, really? Apparently enough to allow Overwatch to still function, to negate the need for a new headquarters, to stop the Swiss Incident from occurring; but what of Jack Morrison? What of Ana, and Angela?

What of Gabriel?

76 steps off the plane slowly. He stares at his shoes and counts the steps he has to go down, to keep his eyes focused on anything other than the Swiss base--the base he and Gabriel laid waste to, before--standing tall and proud in all its glory, without the proof of their failure in rubble and ash. 

“...Jack? Is that you?”

76 halts abruptly. He knows the voice just as well as he knows his own, recognizes it like something out of a dream. 

He looks up and nearly chokes on his breath--because there stands Gabriel, looking older in the faint hint of grey hairs near his temples and the stern creases around his eyes but alive, _human,_ from the crooked bridge of his nose to the way his dark eyes hold 76’s gaze, disbelieving.

“...Gabe,” 76 breathes, taking a cautious step forward; but Gabriel beats him to it, lunging the short distance between them and throwing his arms around 76’s neck, pulling him into a crushing hug against the warmth of his chest. 

“I thought--I thought you were _dead,”_ Gabriel whispers, voice fierce against 76’s neck, fingers digging in like he’s afraid he’ll disappear again. “We all did--you went MIA, _decades_ ago, Jack…”

Gabriel pulls back enough to cup 76’s cheeks in his hands, feel his stubble against his palms, trace his thumb across the tail end of a deep-gouged scar. 

“....where have you been?”

76 pauses, then smiles faintly, tipping his head forward so their foreheads touch softly.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs. “I’ll talk.”


End file.
